Many photographers make images in order to pose questions to the viewer. I find my work does not need to ask questions in order to be imbued with meaning. What I am doing is simply showing others my collection of fleeting fireflies of rapture that I caught in my glass jar of a lens. It was Robert Leverant, in his book Zen in the Art of Photography, who realized that the need of the camera is “because we had lost the joy of pure seeing, of connecting up the unseen and the heartfelt with the seen and not heartfelt. The internal with the external.”1 That is what I’m after: art as experience.
Confrontations of Space is a photographic series that is meant to reconnect humanity with its lost spirituality through the senses and inspire awe in the forgotten or unappreciated results of human existence. In part, this is motivated by my observations of contemporary people making a clear distinction between Humanity and Nature which I believe to have caused the problems of loss of spirituality, respect for the land, and general self-fulfillment. At the same time, this rescuing of abandoned memories and images is a means to comfort myself and my belief that there is beauty in everything, and it is worth seeking out. I feel that by saving these objects and places from the oblivion outside of human knowledge is in response to my own great desire to be saved in the same manner: to be remembered, cherished, and loved.
The images compress three-dimensional spaces into two-dimensional planes that create images that blur realism and formal design elements which deconstruct the three-dimensionality of the scene. These confrontations of space within the image then play with and against the confrontations occurring in the organic and man-made shapes reflecting the reservations that Humanity has with claiming that it is natural and that its structures are organic as a beehive.
1. Robert Leverant,Zen in the Art of Photography(Berkeley: Image Press, 1969), 3.
